What Have I Done?
by rae-sim
Summary: Missing scene from the end of GoF. What other choices were there? All choices smelled like death this time, and it hurt to look in Severus’s face right now. Oneshot.


His room is made for pacing. A round room, so he never comes to a corner and has to stop and turn around. He can just keep going forever, endless circles, measuring time step by step.

It's been three hours since Severus has gone. When will he come back? _Will _he come back?

His master – his other master – is not the forgiving kind. He hadn't missed the pallor on his Potions master's face as he had swept from the room.

"_You know what I must ask you to do…if you are ready…if you are prepared?" _

"_I am."_

And then he had gone, back to Voldemort's side, and he knows that nothing good can come of it for Severus himself.

_What have I done_? he asks himself. But I _had_ to send him – he is just one man, and God knows I care about him, but he can save the lives of hundreds, maybe thousands. I can't afford to give in to sentiment; we have a war on our hands, and the Ministry doesn't even know it yet.

But _three hours_…

Images race through his mind. Of bodies they had found, contorted, beaten, having died a horrible death. Images from the last war. He isn't sure about any deities out there, but he prays anyway: please, keep him safe, don't let him end up like that…

_What have I done?_

Severus is strong, he reminds himself. He is clever. And a world-class Occlumens.

Is it going to be enough?

Three more laps around the room. Fawkes trills reassuringly.

A knock on the door, finally. He almost stumbles in his haste to open.

"Severus!" He pulls him in, pushes him into a chair, kneels down in front of him. "Did everything go as planned? Are you well?" He anxiously looks him over – no obvious injury, but he is pale, so pale…

When he answers, it is barely more than a whisper. "Everything went according to plan. I am a Death Eater once again."

"Did he hurt you?"

"A Cruciatus. Nothing more."

Dumbledore's hands tremble as he fixes a cup of hot chocolate, pushes it into his Potion master's hand. Chocolate helps to fight the darkness and the pain, no one knows why, but it does.

He notices that Severus's hands tremble, too, as he lifts the cup to his lips.

"He believed you?"

"Yes. He believed me. For now." Severus's voice is bitter-sharp, and he can't blame him. It is a bitter thing he has asked him to do.

But he would have been a marked man from this day on had he not returned to the Dark Lord's side. You can't be an alive Ex-Death-Eater, not with Voldemort back. Severus would have been dead within weeks. Dark Lords don't have to fight fair.

_We could hide you_, he had offered. _There is still time, he may never find you_…. He had offered, knowing he was hoping that Severus would turn the offer down, because they needed him, because no one else could give them what Severus could. And he had been right; he had been turned down flat; Severus wasn't the type to run.

And what other choices were there? All choices smelled like death this time, and it hurts to look in Severus's face right now. He loves him, but there are others to think of; he loves them, too.

And Severus gets up, and he looks old, much older than his years, and he looks in pain and tired and _afraid_, and Dumbledore's heart constricts as he watches him.

He gazes into his thin, white face, so familiar after all these year, and he puts a blue-veined, wrinkled old hand against a sallow cheek, a touch of warmth against cold skin. "For what it's worth, my friend – I_ am_ sorry." And there are tears running from old blue eyes, eyes that aren't twinkling, tears running into his beard, dropping onto the floor with a soft plopping sound.

And for a moment he thinks he sees tears in those hard black eyes as well, and his Potions master, his colleague, his comrade swallows hard. "I know," he says, and his voice is rough. He nods once, and then he is gone, back to his dungeon, back to his bed, to finally get some rest.

And Dumbledore stands there a few more minutes, staring at the closed door, feeling the weight of the future, the weight of responsibility, the weight of decisions he would give anything not to have to make.

_What have I done?_

* * *

Review, please? 


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